The present invention relates to multimedia systems, and more particularly to the associative management of distributed multimedia assets and associated resources using multi-domain agent-based communication between heterogeneous peers.
The convergence of computer technology with the traditional xe2x80x9cmediaxe2x80x9d industries, such as broadcast television, has resulted in a jumbled assortment of products and applications that do not work well together. Multimedia products and applications seek to blend conventional computer data files and text data with audio and video sequences. Although the integration of digital encoding and storage technologies is adding new operational efficiencies, methods of managing these multimedia resources need to be upgraded to take full advantage of these new operating efficiencies.
One example is the modern television broadcast facility which has various types of components from different manufacturers that must be integrated to create an efficient, reliable environment for acquisition, production, transmission and archival of material, as shown in FIG. 1. Acquisition Devices acquire incoming source material and store it for later use. This material may range from programs and commercials in an on-air environment, to raw news feeds and digitized field tape material in the newsroom, to live material coming from cameras in a live or sports production environment. Editing Systems are applications and associated devices that allow the manipulation of source material into an edited piece, often referred to as a composition. Various types of editing applications exist, from simple xe2x80x9ctrimmingxe2x80x9d applications used in on-air environments to xe2x80x9ccuts-onlyxe2x80x9d editors found in news and sports all the way to advanced post-production editors supporting 3D effects, multi-layered compositing, etc. Transmission Devices take the final output from the editing applications, and sometimes directly from the acquisition devices, and plays it to air. These devices are the workhorses of the station and are distinguished primarily by attributes of high availability, reliability and quality. Archives store material for later use. Since the amount of online storage is insufficient to handle all material in a system, an archive is required to store that material, either xe2x80x9cnear-linexe2x80x9d for relatively rapid retrieval of material likely to be needed in the near future or xe2x80x9coff-linexe2x80x9d for material that is infrequently, if ever, needed. These archives range widely in size, all the way up to video libraries in news departments at the major networks of over 100,000 hours of storage. Control Devices are the brains of the facility and automatically control acquisition, transmission and archival devices in the facility. They also contain and manage databases of the material in the facility. Two important types of control systems found in broadcast facilities are Broadcast Automation/Control Systems that control on-air operations and Newsroom Computer Systems that control news operations.
Low-Resolution Video is a practical solution to the problem of storage costs and bandwidth limitations that make 100% reliable, highest resolution media unavailable to all interested users at a minimum cost. To make digital, non-linear production the norm in broadcast, the requirements of the production processes from acquisition to archive must be met in a practical and cost effective manner. To meet this need low-resolution encoders that generate xe2x80x9cshadowxe2x80x9d material and associated servers that present the xe2x80x9cshadowxe2x80x9d material to users have recently become available and solutions integrating them into the broadcast facility are highly sought after.
Catalogers also meet the needs of cost-conscious managers who are focused on operating at a high level of efficiency with a minimum of overhead. With the constant pressure to provide higher qualities of service to their customers, managers are led to technologies that add value without extracting a recurring cost. Catalogers are an example of such a technology, as they automatically generate or extract metadata regarding video/audio material and store it for later use without the need for manual intervention. This metadata enables faster location and identification of material for use in the production of news stories and other types of finished products. Various types of catalogers exist offering features such as automatic creation of xe2x80x9cthumbnailxe2x80x9d images based on intelligent scene-change detection algorithms, translation of speech to text using advanced algorithms on today""s fast processors, and even scene and face-recognition. The list of technologies and products in this area is sure to grow in the future. In addition other metadata actually generated by the cameraperson, editor or journalist at the source of the material""s production, such as geospatial coordinates, work notes, etc., will grow and be managed by these systems.
All these components are responsible for managing multimedia assets and associated metadataxe2x80x94but no xe2x80x9clanguagexe2x80x9d exists to provide a single, unified view of the material that allows users to easily locate and access all this material. This unified, logical view is required not only by the traditional xe2x80x9cvideo jockeysxe2x80x9d, such as editors and librarians, but also by other facility personnel, such as sales, marketing and management, and even people outside the facility, such as researchers. Clearly there exists a need for an Asset Management System that provides this unification.
Various different types of Asset Management Systems attempt to address these problems. Most Broadcast Automation System vendors, such as Louth and Odetics, provide Media Management for on-air operations and some also address news production as well. Several other companies, such as Silicon Graphics and Cinebase, have developed Asset Management Systems that are targeted at post-production facilities. Some of these systems are designed to be open, an important attribute. But very few address the issues involved when post-production, live/sports/news production and on-air transmission must interact. Even fewer address the problems encountered when these various assets are distributed across wide geographies. None do so in an open, scalable, fault-tolerant peer-to-peer environment.
A common approach in current systems is a client-server architecture. These systems require that distributed devices copy their metadata and sometimes even content to a central repository. The result is a system that is too unwieldy and expensive, or that requires that the applications at the assets give up abilities that currently exist within the Asset Management System.
Another common approach is an object-oriented architecture. Object-oriented architectures are excellent for building systems, either client-server or distributed, with pre-defined behavior through specification of interfaces via an Interface Definition Language (IDL). However this rigor is not conducive to flexible, extensible, dynamically configurable systems since the defined interfaces are early-bound and application specificxe2x80x94the introduction of new messages often causes the entire system to be rebuilt. To be truly extensible, a unified system for global sharing of information needs to provide a common language for exchanging data that is self-describing and of any character set.
The use of agent-based technology for information management is being investigated by ARPA""s Knowledge Sharing Effort. The KQML language specification is a result of this investigation. The InfoSleuth technology (mcc.com/project/infosleuth) is one example of a KQML-based system for distributed knowledge sharing. However these efforts do not include allowing users to locate assets through various means, exposing information about these assets via a standard cross-platform data exchange language, maintaining synchronization of logically equivalent multimedia assets, providing the ability to trace relationships between assets stored in heterogeneous systems, allowing manipulation of assets by users and administrators including indirect manipulation via the user of xe2x80x9cproxyxe2x80x9d assets, providing a security model that restricts access and control to certain individuals or groups, allowing assets to be transferred between nodes in the system, or supporting the integration of third-party encoders, metadata generators/extractors, databases, storage servers and search engines. All these capabilities are necessary for a distributed multimedia asset management system.
Agent technology is different from client-server technology in that software agents work as peers to perform a task by delegating parts of the task to neighboring agents. The client-server model has a clear hierarchy that is not peer-to-peer and does not collectively perform tasks by delegation. Agent technology also is different from object-oriented technologies in the commitment to an application-independent protocol of typed messages. KQML agents could have been implemented using object-oriented technologies, but object-oriented programming does not make any commitment to such a protocol.
Agent technology allows each subsystem to be encapsulated in a common knowledge representation format. Information taxonomy in the system is expressed in the common representation. Agents within the system find other agents that share the taxonomy and thus share knowledge and collaborate in the performance of tasks. Using a type peer-to-peer protocol between agents allows the horizontal extension of xe2x80x9cthe systemxe2x80x9d to share knowledge and task execution between agents across boundaries, such as networks, subsystems, facilities and organizations. In this way a system has a distributed set of resources and services that collaborate to perform tasks. There is no single point of control and no hierarchy as in the client-server model.
What is desired is a method and system for associative management of distributed multimedia assets and associated resources using multi-domain agent-based communication between heterogeneous peers.
Accordingly the present invention provides associative management of distributed multimedia assets and associated resources by using multi-domain agent-based communication between heterogeneous peers. An Asset/Resource Management (ARM) platform architecture has an ARM Framework that is used by Asset Management Agents. The ARM Framework includes an ARM Infrastructure which is a system of protocols and libraries from which communities of agents that are grouped in logical Agent Domains are built. The agents communicate via the KQML language embedded within TCP/IP messages, advertise their capabilities and cooperate together to perform meaningful work. The XML language is used to embed xe2x80x9ccontentxe2x80x9d within the KQML language, providing a self-describing data representation using various character sets. The ARM Framework includes system agents that include in each Agent Domain a Resolver, an Agent Name Server (ANS) and the xe2x80x9cYellow Pagesxe2x80x9d containing the Advertised System Knowledge (ASK) agent. The Resolver tracks assets in the system, providing a logical-to-physical mapping of URN to URL. The ASK agent maintains the agent system knowledge base and contains information registered with it by each agent that provides services in the Agent Domain. The ANS agent manages security in the ARM Framework. The Asset Management Agents include Resource Brokers that represent servers and translate asset metadata and service definitions on those assets to a common XML-based Data Exchange and Query language. There currently are four classes of service: Metadata, Content, Query and Transfer. The Asset Management Agents also include User Agents, which are intelligent agents acting as a helper to applications and providing a doorway to the Asset Management Agents community. Capture Services, which are not agent-based, allow material to be captured into the system. A key function of these services is to ensure that logically equivalent multimedia assets are synchronized in time, allowing navigation between them in the time domain.
The objects, advantages and other novel features of the present invention are apparent from the following detailed description when read in conjunction with the appended claims and attached drawing.